The Winds of War

“Branch is no phony,” said Warren. “He has a remarkable record, Briny. And you’d better make up your mind that he’s boss man on that submarine.”

“Sure he’s boss man, and sure he’s got a great record, and sure I’m in hack, but hell will freeze over before he gets another sketch of that air compressor. When I found out that Natalie had gone back to Italy to have her baby, I put in a request for transfer to the Atlantic. Our subs operate in and out of the Med and I might have a chance to see her, and maybe even to get her out. I told him all this. He lectured me about subordinating my personal life to the Navy! Well, I said I was putting the request in anyhow. He forwarded it — he had to forward it — ‘not recommending approval.’”

Warren said, his eyes on the road, “You’ve been aboard that boat three months. The usual tour is two years.”

“The usual ensign doesn’t have a pregnant wife stuck in Italy.”

“Don’t get me wrong, but that’s not the Navy’s fault.”

“I’m not blaming the Navy. I’m telling you why I’m not on fire to please Branch Hoban.

Madeline struck into this curt exchange with a laugh. “Say, do you guys know that Dad is studying Russian again, of all things?”

“Russian!” Warren exclaimed. “What for?”

“He’s going there. I don’t know when or how.” Madeline laughed. “Mom’s fit to be tied. He’s taking a crash course, ten hours a day. She never sees him. She sits around that big new house by herself, except when somebody shows up to play tennis with her or go to a movie.”

“Dad had better step on it,” Warren said, if he wants to beat the Germans into Moscow.”

Byron took Madeline’s lei and put it around his neck. “Boy, these are strong frangipani. God knows when we three will ever be together again like this. I’m in a mood, but I love you both. How’s the booze situation at your house, Warren?”

“Ninety-seven percent. We just topped off.”

“Great. I intend to burn you down to fifty percent.”

“By all means.”

Byron came on the latest airmail Time at Warren’s house, and read it in a deck chair among the multiple roots of a banyan tree, while Warren, Janice, and their guests grew gay on hors d’oeuvres and rum drinks. At sea for two weeks, he had heard only fragmentary news.

When the party reached the stage of hula dancing to the guitar music of the grinning houseboy, Warren began broiling steaks in billows of fragrant smoke. Meantime Hugh Cleveland and Madeline did a barefoot hula while the Navy people and islanders clapped and laughed, and a photographer from the society page snapped pictures. Byron sourly watched his sister’s white feet writhe in the grass, and her pink-sheathed bottom gyrate; and he wondered who was mad — he or this playful group. According to Time, the Germans were rolling through Russia exactly as they had through Poland two years before. It was the same month, September. The cheery German claims, backed by combat photographs, were most convincing. The pictures showed villages afire, skies aswarm with Luftwaffe, roads through cornfields jammed with refugees, and unshaven Russian prisoners behind barbed wire in sullen hordes. The scenes brought vividly back to Byron’s mind the days when he and Natalie had drawn together: the flight in the old automobile from Cracow to Warsaw, his wound, the child on the road crying over her mother’s smashed face, the orange flares, the whistling bombs, Natalie in the malodorous jammed hospital, the song of grasshoppers in no-man’s-land.

Carrying two plates of sliced steak and french fries, Warren came and sat down beside him on the grass. “Eat hearty, my lad.”

Byron said, “Thanks. Pretty grim issue of Time.”

“Hell, Briny, you knew the Germans would take the Russkis, didn’t you? The Russian’s a hardy soldier, but that Bolshevik government’s just a mess of crackpot politicians. Stalin shot half his officers in ‘38, including all the professionals left from the Czarist days. You can’t fight a war without career officers. That’s where the Germans have us all licked. That General Staff of theirs has been going for a hundred years. The day they lost the last war, why, they just started collecting maps and dope for fighting this one. That’s a savvy outfit. How about some wine? California Burgundy gets here in pretty fair shape.”

“Sure.”

Returning with a big purple bottle, Warren said, “Well, there’s one good thing. If Hitler does take Moscow, the Japs will jump north to grab their end of Siberia. That’ll give us a breather. Otherwise they’re a cinch to come south soon. Every day they’re getting lower on oil. We’re sure as hell not ready for them. We need a year just to harden the Philippines to where we can hold.”

Byron slapped the copy of Time. “Incidentally, did you read about your father-in- law’s latest speech? He wants to explore making a deal with the Germans.”

“I know. Well, he’s way off base on that. Hitler’s not making any deals, not while he’s winning so big. But eventually, Briny, the Krauts may be easier to come to terms with than the Japs. They’re white people.”

“True, except for starters we’d have to shoot our Jews.”

Warren slowly turned his bronzed face at his brother. An embarrassed smile played on his thin lips. “Even the Germans aren’t shooting their Jews, guy. I think their policy is disgusting, but—”

“You don’t know what they’re doing. I run into a stone wall when I try to tell people here what the Germans are like. Branch Hoban thinks this war is Saxon civilization against the rising tide of Asia, and the Russians count as Asia, and we and the British should wise up and make common cause with the Nazis in a hurry, because they’re fighting our battle, and it’s the white race’s last chance. He gets all this out of books by a nut called Homer Lea. He reads those books to pieces. The Valor of Ignorance is the main one, and The Day of the Saxon.”

“I’ve read Homer Lea,” said Warren, looking at his watch. “He’s a screwball, but pretty interesting — well, our friend Vic’s due for a bottle, but it’s a cinch Jan’s not going to abandon the governor.”

“I’ll feed the baby.”

“Do you like babies, or something?”

“I like this one.”

While Victor lay on his uncle’s lap drinking mild, Byron drank California Burgundy. Each finished his bottle at about the same time. He tucked the baby away in his side-porch crib, and returned to the lawn. The breeze had died, and it was very hot. The scent from the lemon trees filled Byron with melancholy. He lay face down under the banyan tree and fell asleep. When he woke, Lieutenant Aster, drink in hand, was shaking him.

“Blazes,” Byron said, sitting up, a stale taste of wind in his mouth, “I was supposed to report in at three, wasn’t I? Are you here to take me back in irons?”

“Amnesty. You’re out of hack,” Aster grinned, “and you’ve got twenty-four hours leave. This just came in on the harbor circuit from Rome, forwarded via Lisbon, Washington, and San Francisco.”

He handed a dispatch to Byron, who read it sitting cross-legged on the grass.

ENSIGN BYRON HENRY, USS DEVILFISH X CAN YOU THINK OF A GOOD NAME FOR A SEVEN-POUND BOY X BOTH FINE BOTH LOVE YOU X NATALIE AND WHOSIS HENRY

Byron bowed his head and put a hand over his face. Like his father, he had a simple religious streak; he muttered a prayer of thanks for the miracle of a boy, born from the wild lovemaking in Lisbon that had briefly joined two bodies, now almost as far apart as they could be on the planet. After a moment he looked up with a slow smile, his eyes glistening.

“How about that, Lady?”

“Congratulations, Briny.”

Byron got to his feet, looking around dazedly at the party. The radio was pouring out “Lovely Hula Hands,” Janice was wiggling barefoot with the captain of the Enterprise, the governor was dancing with Madeline, evincing pop-eyed pleasure at the play of her hips, and Hugh Cleveland was singing an obscene parody that brought barks of male laughter an delighted shrieks from the women. “I guess I’ll tell my brother and sister.”

Aster strolled beside him, rattling the ice in his glass. “Quite a wingding here. Isn’t that the governor? Your sister-in-law is sure nice. I hardly had my foot inside the door when she handed me a planter’s punch.”